Appendix
Books Printed at the Strawberry Hill Press
⁂ The following list contains all the books mentioned in the Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, etc., 1784, together with those issued between that date and Walpole’s death. It does not include the several title-pages and labels which he printed from time to time, or the quatrains and verses purporting to be addressed by the Press to Lady Rochford, Lady Townshend, Madame de Boufflers, the Miss Berrys, and others. Nor does it comprise the pieces struck off by Mr. Kirgate, the printer, for the benefit of himself and his friends. On the other hand, all the works enumerated here are, with three exceptions, described from copies either in the possession of the present writer, or to be found in the British Museum and the Dyce and Forster Libraries at South Kensington.
1757
Odes by Mr. Gray. Φωνἁντα συνετοῖσι—Pindar, Olymp. II. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, MDCCLVII.
Half-title, ‘Odes by Mr. Gray. [Price one Shilling.]’; Title as above; Text, pp. 5-21. 4to. 1,000 copies printed. ‘June 25th [1757], I erected a printing-press at my house at Strawberry Hill.’ ‘Aug. 8th, I published two Odes by Mr. Gray, the first production of my press’ (Short Notes). ’And with what do you think we open? Cedite, Romani Impressores,—with nothing under Graii Carmina. I found him [Gray] in town last week: he had brought his two Odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley’s hands’... (Walpole to Chute, 12 July, 1757). ‘I send you two copies (one for Dr. Cocchi) of a very honourable opening of my press,—two amazing Odes of Mr. Gray; they are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are sublime! consequently, I fear, a little obscure’ (Walpole to Mann, 4 Aug., 1757). ‘You are very particular, I can tell you, in liking Gray’s Odes; but you must remember that the age likes Akenside, and did like Thomson! Can the same people like both?’ (Walpole to Montagu, 25 Aug., 1757).
To Mr. Gray, on his Odes. [By David Garrick.]
Single leaf, containing six quatrains (24 lines). 4to. Only six copies are said to have been printed; but it is not improbable that there were more. There is a copy in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington.
A Journey into England. By Paul Hentzner, in the year M.D.XC.VIII. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLVII.
Title, Dedication (2 leaves); ‘Advertisement,’ i-x; half-title; Latin and English Text on opposite pages, 1 to 103 (double numbers). Sm. 8vo. 220 copies printed. ‘In Oct., 1757, was finished at my press an edition of Hentznerus, translated by Mr. Bentley, to which I wrote an advertisement. I dedicated it to the Society of Antiquaries, of which I am a member’ (Short Notes). ‘An edition of Hentznerus, with a version by Mr. Bentley, and a little preface of mine, were prepared [i. e., as the first issue of the press], but are to wait [for Gray’s Odes]’ (Walpole to Chute, 12 July, 1757).
1758
A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, with Lists of their Works. Dove, diavolo! Messer Ludovico, avete pigliato tante coglionerie? Card. d’Este, to Ariosto. Vol. i. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill. MDCCLVIII.
—— Vol. ii. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill. MDCCLVIII.
Vol. i.,—Title; Dedication of 2 leaves to Lord Hertford; Advertisement, pp. i-viii; half-title; Text, pp. 1-219, and unpaged Index. There is also a frontispiece engraved by Grignion. Vol. ii.,—Half-title; Title; Text, pp. 1-215, and unpaged Index. 8vo. 300 copies issued. A second edition, ‘corrected and enlarged,’ was printed in 1758 (but dated 1759), in two vols. 8vo., ‘for R. and J. Dodsley, in Pallmall; and J. Graham in the Strand.’ According to Baker (Catalogue of Books, etc., printed at the Press at Strawberry Hill [1810]), 40 copies of a supplement or Postscript to the Royal and Noble Authors were printed by Kirgate in 1786. ‘In April, 1758, was finished the first impression of my “Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,” which I had written the preceding year in less than five months’ (Short Notes). ‘My book is marvellously in fashion, to my great astonishment. I did not expect so much truth and such notions of liberty would have made their fortune in this our day’ (Walpole to Montagu, 4 May, 1758). ‘Dec. 5th [1758] was published the second edition of my “Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors.” Two thousand were printed, but not at Strawberry Hill’ (Short Notes). ‘I have but two motives for offering you the accompanying trifle [i. e., the Postscript above referred to].... Coming from my press, I wish it may be added to your Strawberry editions. It is so far from being designed for the public that I have printed but forty copies’ (Walpole to Hannah More, 1 Jan., 1787).
An Account of Russia as it was in the Year 1710. By Charles Lord Whitworth. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill. MDCCLVIII.
Title, ‘Advertisement’ pp. i-xxiv; Text, pp. 1-158; Errata, one page. Sm. 8vo. 700 copies printed. ‘The beginning of October [1758] I published Lord Whitworth’s account of Russia, to which I wrote the advertisement’ (Short Notes). ‘A book has been left at your ladyship’s house; it is Lord Whitworth’s Account of Russia’ (Walpole to Lady Hervey, 17 Oct., 1758). Mr. (afterwards Lord) Whitworth was Ambassador to St. Petersburg in the reign of Peter the Great.
The Mistakes; or, the Happy Resentment. A Comedy. By the late Lord * * * * [Henry Hyde, Lord Hyde and Cornbury.] London: Printed by S. Richardson, in the Year 1758.
Title; List of Subscribers, pp. xvi; Advertisement, Prologue, and Dramatis Personæ, 2 leaves; Text, 1-83; Epilogue unpaged. Baker gives the following particulars from the Biographia Dramatica as to this book: ‘The Author of this Piece was the learned, ingenious, and witty Lord Cornbury, but it was never acted. He made a present of it to that great Actress, Mrs. Porter, to make what Emolument she could by it. And that Lady, after his Death, published it by Subscription, at Five Shillings, each Book, which was so much patronized by the Nobility and Gentry that Three Thousand Copies were disposed of. Prefixed to it is a Preface, by Mr. Horace Walpole, at whose Press at Strawberry-Hill it was printed.’ Baker adds, ‘Mr. Yardley, who when living, kept a Bookseller’s Shop in New-Inn-Passage, confirmed this account, by asserting, that he assisted in printing it at that Press.’ But Baker nevertheless prefixes an asterisk to the title, which implies that it was ‘not printed for Mr. Walpole,’ and this probably accounts for Richardson’s name on the title-page. By the subscription list, the Hon. Horace Walpole took 21 copies, David Garrick, 38, and Mr. Samuel Richardson, of Salisbury Court, 4. All Walpole says is, ‘About the same time [1758] Mrs. Porter published [for her benefit] Lord Hyde’s play, to which I had written the advertisement’ (Short Notes).
A Parallel; in the Manner of Plutarch: between a most celebrated Man of Florence; and One, scarce ever heard of, in England. By the Reverend Mr. Spence. ‘—Parvis componere magna’—Virgil. [Portrait in circle of Magliabecchi.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill, by William Robinson; and Sold by Messieurs Dodsley, at Tully’s-Head, Pall-Mall; for the Benefit of Mr. Hill. M.DCC.LVIII.
Title; Text, pp. 4-104. Sm. 8vo. 700 copies printed. ‘1759. Feb. 2nd. I published Mr. Spence’s Parallel of Magliabecchi and Mr. Hill, a tailor of Buckingham; calculated to raise a little sum of money for the latter poor man. Six hundred copies were sold in a fortnight, and it was reprinted in London’ (Short Notes). ‘Mr. Spence’s Magliabecchi is published to-day from Strawberry; I believe you saw it, and shall have it; but ’tis not worth sending you on purpose’ (Walpole to Chute, 2 Feb., 1759).
Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose. Pereunt et imputantur. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLVIII.
Title; Dedication and ‘Table of Contents,’ iii-vi; Text, 1-219. Sm. 8vo. 200 copies printed. ‘In the summer of 1758, I printed some of my own Fugitive Pieces, and dedicated them to my cousin, General Conway’ (Short Notes). ‘March 17 [1759]. I began to distribute some copies of my “Fugitive Pieces,” collected and printed together at Strawberry Hill, and dedicated to General Conway’ (ibid.). One of these, which is in the Forster Collection at South Kensington, went to Gray. ‘This Book [says a MS. inscription] once belonged to Gray the Poet, and has his autograph on the Title-page. I [i. e., George Daniel, of Canonbury] bought it at Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson’s Sale Rooms for £1. 19 on Thursday, 28 Augt. 1851, from the valuable collection of Mr. Penn of Stoke.’
1760
Catalogue of the Pictures and Drawings in the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill. Strawberry-Hill, 1760.
Pp. 8. 8vo. [Lowndes.]
Catalogue of the Collection, of Pictures of the Duke of Devonshire, General Guise, and the late Sir Paul Methuen. Strawberry-Hill, 1760.
Pp. 44. 8vo. 12 copies, printed on one side only. [Lowndes.]
M. Annæi Lucani Pharsalia cum Notis Hugonis Grotii, et Richardi Bentleii. Multa sunt condonanda in opere postumo. In Librum iv, Nota 641. [Emblematical vignette.] Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLX.
Title, Dedication (by Richard Cumberland to Halifax), and Advertisement (Ad Lectorem), 3 leaves; Text, pp. 1-525. 4to. 500 copies printed. Cumberland took up the editing when Bentley the younger resigned it. ‘I am just undertaking an edition of Lucan, my friend Mr. Bentley having in his possession his father’s notes and emendations on the first seven books’ (Walpole to Zouch, 9 Dec., 1758). ‘I would not alone undertake to correct the press; but I am so lucky as to live in the strictest friendship with Dr. Bentley’s only son, who, to all the ornament of learning, has the amiable turn of mind, disposition, and easy wit’ (Walpole to Zouch, 12 Jan., 1759). ‘Lucan is in poor forwardness. I have been plagued with a succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth book. It will scarce appear before next winter’ (Walpole to Zouch, 23 Dec., 1759). ‘My Lucan is finished, but will not be published till after Christmas’ (Walpole to Zouch, 27 Nov., 1760). ‘I have delivered to your brother... a Lucan, printed at Strawberry, which, I trust, you will think a handsome edition’ (Walpole to Mann, 27 Jan., 1761).
1762
Anecdotes of Painting in England; with some Account of the principal Artists; and incidental Notes on other Arts; collected by the late Mr. George Vertue; and now digested and published from his original MSS. By Mr. Horace Walpole. Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere. Vol. I. Printed by Thomas Farmer at Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLXII.
—— Le sachant Anglois, je crus qu’il m’alloit parler d’edifices et de peintures. Nouvelle Eloise, vol. i. p. 245. Vol. II. Printed by Thomas Farmer at Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLXII.
—— Vol. III. (Motto of six lines from Prior’s Protogenes and Apelles.) Strawberry-Hill: Printed in the Year MDCCLXIII.
—— To which is added the History of the Modern Taste in Gardening. The Glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the Fir-tree, the Pine-tree, and the Box together, to beautify the Place of my Sanctuary, and I will make the Place of my Feet glorious. Isaiah, lx. 13. Volume the Fourth and last. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, MDCCLXXI.
Vol. i.,—Title, Dedication, Preface, pp. i-xiii; Contents; Text, pp. 1-168, with Appendix and Index unpaged. Vol. ii.,—Title; Text, pp. 1-158, with Appendix, Index, and ‘Errata’ unpaged; and ‘Additional Lives to the First Edition of Anecdotes of Painting in England,’ pp. 1-12. Vol. iii.,—Title; pp. 1-155, with Appendix and Index unpaged; and ‘Additional Lives to the First Edition of Anecdotes of Painting in England,’ pp. 1-4. Vol. iv.,—Title, Dedication, Advertisement (dated October 1, 1780), pp. i-x; Contents; Text, pp. 1-151 (dated August 12, 1770); ‘Errata;’ pp. x-52; Appendix of one leaf (‘Prints by or after Hogarth, discovered since the Catalogue was finished’), and Index unpaged. The volumes are 4to., with many portraits and plates. 600 copies were printed. The fourth volume was in type in 1770, but not issued until Oct., 1780. It was dedicated to the Duke of Richmond,—Lady Hervey, to whom the three earlier volumes had been inscribed, having died in 1768. A second edition of the first three volumes was printed by Thomas Kirgate at Strawberry Hill in 1765. ‘Sept. 1st [1759]. I began to look over Mr. Vertue’s MSS., which I bought last year for one hundred pounds, in order to compose the Lives of English Painters’ (Short Notes). ‘1760, Jan. 1st. I began the Lives of English Artists, from Vertue’s MSS. (that is, “Anecdotes of Painting,” etc.)’ (ibid.). ‘Aug. 14th. Finished the first volume of my “Anecdotes of Painting in England.” Sept. 5th, began the second volume. Oct. 23d, finished the second volume’ (ibid.). ‘1761, Jan. 4th, began the third volume’ (ibid.). ‘June 29th, resumed the third volume of my “Anecdotes of Painting,” which I had laid aside after the first day’ (ibid.). ‘Aug. 22nd, finished the third volume of my “Anecdotes of Painting”’ (ibid.). ‘The “Anecdotes of Painting” have succeeded to the press: I have finished two volumes; but as there will at least be a third, I am not determined whether I shall not wait to publish the whole together. You will be surprised, I think, to see what a quantity of materials the industry of one man [Vertue] could amass!’ (Walpole to Zouch, 27 Nov., 1760.) ‘You drive your expectations much too fast, in thinking my “Anecdotes of Painting” are ready to appear, in demanding three volumes. You will see but two, and it will be February first’ (Walpole to Montagu, 30 Dec., 1761). ‘I am now publishing the third volume, and another of Engravers’ (Walpole to Dalrymple, 31 Jan., 1764). ‘I have advertised my long-delayed last volume of “Painters” to come out, and must be in town to distribute it’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 23 Sept., 1780). ‘I have left with Lord Harcourt for you my new old last volume of “Painters”’ (Walpole to Mason, 13 Oct., 1780).
1763.
A Catalogue of Engravers, who have been born, or resided in England; digested by Mr. Horace Walpole from the MSS. of Mr. George Vertue; to which is added an Account of the Life and Works of the latter. And Art reflected Images to Art.... Pope. Strawberry-Hill: Printed in the Year MDCCLXIII.
Title; pp. 1-128, last page dated ‘Oct. 10th, 1762;’ ‘Life of Mr. George Vertue’ pp. 1-14; ‘List of Vertue’s Works,’ pp. 1-20, last page dated ‘Oct. 22d, 1762;’ Index of Names of Engravers, unpaged. 4to. There are several portraits, including one of Vertue after Richardson. ‘Aug. 2nd [1762], began the “Catalogue of Engravers.” October 10th, finished it’ (Short Notes). ‘The volume of Engravers is printed off, and has been some time; I only wait for some of the plates’ (Walpole to Cole, 8 Oct., 1763). ‘I am now publishing the third volume [of the ‘Anecdotes of Painting’], and another of “Engravers”’ (Walpole to Dalrymple, 31 Jan., 1764).
1764
Poems by Anna Chamber Countess Temple. [Plate of Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill: Printed in the Year MDCCLXIV.
Title, Verses signed ‘Horace Walpole, January 26th, 1764,’ Text, 1-34 in all. 4to. 100 copies printed by Prat. ‘I shall send you, too, Lady Temple’s Poems’ (Walpole to Montagu, 16 July, 1764).
The Magpie and her Brood, a Fable, from the Tales of Bonaventure des Periers, Valet de Chambre to the Queen of Navarre; addressed to Miss Hotham.
4 pp., containing 72 lines,—initialed ‘H. W.’ 4to. ‘Oct. 15th, [1764] wrote the fable of “The Magpie and her Brood” for Miss [Henrietta] Hotham, then near eleven years old, great niece of Henrietta Hobart, Countess Dowager of Suffolk. It was taken from Les Nouvelles Récréations de Bonaventure des Periers, Valet-de-Chambre to the Queen of Navarre’ (Short Notes).
The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by Himself. [Plate of Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Prat in the Year MDCCLXIV.
Title, Dedication, and Advertisement, 5 leaves; Text, pp. 1-171. Folding plate portrait. 4to. 200 copies printed. ‘1763. Beginning of September wrote the Dedication and Preface to Lord Herbert’s Life’ (Short Notes). ‘I have got a most delectable work to print, which I had great difficulty to obtain, and which I must use while I can have it. It is the life of the famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury’ (Letter to the Bishop of Carlisle, 10 July, 1763). ‘It will not be long before I have the pleasure of sending you by far the most curious and entertaining book that my press has produced.... It is the life of the famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and written by himself,—of the contents I will not anticipate one word’ (Letter to Mason, 29 Dec., 1763). ‘The thing most in fashion is my edition of Lord Herbert’s Life; people are mad after it, I believe because only two hundred were printed’ (Letter to Montagu, 16 Dec., 1764). ‘This singular work was printed from the original MS. in 1764, at Strawberry-hill, and is perhaps the most extraordinary account that ever was given seriously by a wise man of himself’ (Walpole, Works, 1798, i. 363).
1768
Cornélie, Vestale. Tragédie. [By the President Hénault.] Imprimée à Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLXVIII.
Title; Dedication ‘à Mons. Horace Walpole,’ dated ‘Paris ce 27 Novembre, 1767,’ pp. iii-iv; ‘Acteurs;’ Text, 1-91. 8vo. 200 copies printed; 150 went to Paris. Kirgate printed it. ‘My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by the old President Hénault. It was damned many years ago at Paris, and yet I think is better than some that have succeeded, and much better than any of our modern tragedies. I print it to please the old man, as he was exceedingly kind to me at Paris; but I doubt whether he will live till it is finished. He is to have a hundred copies, and there are to be but an hundred more, of which you shall have one’ (Letter to Montagu, 15 April, 1768). President Hénault died November, 1770, aged eighty-six.
The Mysterious Mother. A Tragedy. By Mr. Horace Walpole. Sit mihi fas audita loqui! Virgil. Printed at Strawberry-Hill: MDCCLXVIII.
Title, ‘Errata,’ ‘Persons’ (2 leaves); Text, pp. 1-120, with Postscript, pp. 1-10 (which see for origin of play). Sm. 8vo. 50 copies issued. The Mysterious Mother is reprinted in Walpole’s Works, 1798, i., pp. 37-129. ‘March 15 [1768]. I finished a tragedy called “The Mysterious Mother,” which I had begun Dec. 25, 1766’ (Short Notes). ‘I thank you for myself, not for my Play.... I accept with great thankfulness what you have voluntarily been so good as to do for me; and should the Mysterious Mother ever be performed when I am dead, it will owe to you its presentation’ (Walpole to Mason, 11 May, 1769).
1769
Poems by the Reverend Mr. Hoyland. Printed at Strawberry Hill: MDCCLXIX.
Title, Advertisement [by Walpole], pp. i-iv; Text, 1-19. 8vo. 300 copies printed. In the British Museum is a copy which simply has ‘Printed in the Year 1769.’ ‘I enclose a short Advertisement for Mr. Hoyland’s poems. I mean by it to tempt people to a little more charity, and to soften to him, as much as I can, the humiliation of its being asked for him; if you approve it, it shall be prefixed to the edition’ (Walpole to Mason, 5 April, 1769).
1770
Reply to the Observations of the Rev. Dr. Milles, Dean of Exeter, and President of the Society of Antiquaries, on the Ward Robe Account.
Pp. 24. Six copies printed, dated 28 August, 1770 [Baker]. ‘In the summer of this year [1770] wrote an answer to Dr. Milles’ remarks on my “Richard the Third”’ (Short Notes).
1772
Copies of Seven Original Letters from King Edward VI. to Barnaby Fitzpatrick. Strawberry-Hill. Printed in the Year M.DCC.LXXII.
Pp. viii-14. 4to. 200 copies printed. ‘1771. End of September, wrote the Advertisement to the “Letters of King Edward the Sixth”’ (Short Notes). ‘I have printed “King Edward’s Letters,” and will bring you a copy’ (Walpole to Mason, 6 July, 1772).
Miscellaneous Antiquities; or, a Collection of Curious Papers: either republished from scarce Tracts, or now first printed from original MSS. Number I. To be continued occasionally. Invenies illic et festa domestica vobis. Sæpe tibi Pater est, sæpe legendus Avus. Ovid. Fast. Lib. 1. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXII.
Title, ‘Advertisement,’ pp. i-iv; Text, 1-48. 4to. 500 copies printed. ‘I have since begun a kind of Desiderata Curiosa, and intend to publish it in numbers, as I get materials; it is to be an Hospital of Foundlings; and though I shall not take in all that offer, there will be no enquiry into the nobility of the parents; nor shall I care how heterogeneous the brats are’ (Walpole to Mason, 6 July, 1772). ‘By that time too I shall have the first number of my “Miscellaneous Antiquities” ready. The first essay is only a republication of some tilts and tournaments’ (Walpole to Mason, 21 July, 1772).
Miscellaneous Antiquities; or, a Collection of Curious Papers: either republished from scarce Tracts, or now first printed from original MSS. Number II. To be continued occasionally. Invenies illic et festa domestica vobis. Sæpe tibi Pater est, sæpe legendus Avus. Ovid. Fast. Lib. i. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXII.
Title and Text, pp. 1-62. 500 copies printed. ‘In July [1772] wrote the “Life of Sir Thomas Wyat [the Elder],” No. II. of my edition of “Miscellaneous Antiquities”’ (Short Notes).
Memoires du Comte de Grammont, par Monsieur le Comte Antoine Hamilton. Nouvelle Edition, augmentée de Notes & d’Eclaircissemens, necessaires, par M. Horace Walpole. Des gens qui écrivent pour le Comte de Grammont, peuvent compter sur quelque indulgence. V. l’Epitre prelim. p. xviii. Imprimée à Strawberry-Hill, M.DCC.LXXII.
Title, Dedication, ‘Avis de L’Editeur,’ ‘Avertissement,’ ‘Epitre à Monsieur le Comte de Grammont,’ ‘Table des Chapitres,’ ‘Errata,’ pp. xxiv; Text, pp. 1-290: ‘Table des personnes,’ 3 pp. Portraits of Hamilton, Mdlle. d’Hamilton, and Philibert Comte de Grammont. 4to. 100 copies printed; 30 went to Paris. It was dedicated to Madame du Deffand, as follows: ‘L’Editeur vous consacre cette Edition, comme un monument de son Amitié, de son Admiration, & de son Respect; à Vous, dont les Grâces, l’Esprit, & le Goût retracent au siecle présent le siecle de Louis quatorze & les agremens de l’Auteur de ces Mémoires.’ ‘I want to send you these [the Miscellaneous Antiquities]... and a “Grammont,” of which I have printed only a hundred copies, and which will be extremely scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France’ (Walpole to Cole, 8 Jan., 1773).
1774
A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole. [Plate of Strawberry Hill.] A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole, youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole Earl of Orford, at Strawberry-Hill, near Twickenham. With an Inventory of the Furniture, Pictures, Curiosities, &c. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXIV.
Two titles; Text, pp. 1-119. 4to. 100 copies printed, 6 on large paper. Many copies have the following: ‘Appendix. Pictures and Curiosities added since the Catalogue was printed,’ pp. 121-145; ‘List of the Books printed at Strawberry-Hill,’ unpaged; ‘Additions since the Appendix,’ pp. 149-152; ‘More Additions,’ pp. 153-158. Baker speaks of an earlier issue of 65 pp. which we have not met with. Lowndes (Appendix to Bibliographer’s Manual, 1864, p. 239) states that it was said by Kirgate to have been used by the servants in showing the house, and differed entirely from the editions of 1774 and 1784.
1775
To Mrs. Crewe. [Verses by Charles James Fox.] N.D.
Pp. 2. Single leaf. 4to. 300 copies printed. Walpole speaks of these in a letter to Mason dated 12 June, 1774; and he sends a copy of them to him, 27 May, 1775. Mrs. Crewe, the Amoret addressed, was the daughter of Fulke Greville, and the wife of J. Crewe. She was painted by Reynolds as an Alpine shepherdess.
Dorinda, a Town Eclogue. [By the Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, brother of the Earl of Ossory.] [Plate of Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate. M.DCC.LXXV.
Title; Text, 3-8. 4to. 300 copies printed. ‘I shall send you soon Fitzpatrick’s “Town Eclogue,” from my own furnace. The verses are charmingly smooth and easy....’ ‘P.S. Here is the Eclogue’ (Letter to Mason, 12 June, 1774).
1778
The Sleep-Walker, a Comedy: in two Acts. Translated from the French [of Antoine de Ferriol, Comte de Pont de Veyle], in March, M.DCC.LXXVIII. [By Elizabeth Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Anspach.] Strawberry-Hill: Printed by T. Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXVIII.
Title, Quatrain, Prologue, Epilogue, Persons, pp. i-viii; Text, 1-56. 8vo. 75 copies printed. The quatrain is by Walpole to Lady Craven, ‘on her Translation of the Somnambule.’ ‘I will send... for yourself a translation of a French play.... It is not for your reading, but as one of the Strawberry editions, and one of the rarest; for I have printed but seventy-five copies. It was to oblige Lady Craven, the translatress...’ (Walpole to Cole, 22 Aug., 1778).
1779
A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by T. Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXIX.
Half-title; Title; Text, pp. 1-55. The letter is dated at end: ‘May 23, 1778.’ 8vo. 200 copies printed. ‘1779. In the preceding autumn had written a defence of myself against the unjust aspersions in the Preface to the Miscellanies of Chatterton. Printed 200 copies at Strawberry Hill this January, and gave them away. It was much enlarged from what I had written in July’ (Short Notes).
1780
To the Lady Horatia Waldegrave, on the Death of the Duke of Ancaster. [Verses by Mr. Charles Miller.] N. D.
Pp. 3, dated at end ‘A.D. 1779.’ 4to. 150 copies printed. ‘I enclose a copy of verses, which I have just printed at Strawberry, only a few copies, and which I hope you will think pretty. They were written three months ago by Mr. Charles Miller, brother of Sir John, on seeing Lady Horatia at Nuneham. The poor girl is better’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 29 Jan., 1780). Lady Horatia Waldegrave was to have been married to the Duke of Ancaster, who died in 1779.
1781
The Muse recalled, an Ode, occasioned by the Nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, eldest daughter of Charles Lord Lucan, March vi., M.DCC.LXXXI. By William Jones, Esq. [afterwards Sir William Jones]. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXXI.
Title; pp. 1-8. 4to. 250 copies printed. There is a well-known portrait of Lavinia Bingham by Reynolds, in which she wears a straw hat with a blue ribbon.
A Letter from the Honourable Thomas Walpole, to the Governor and Committee of the Treasury of the Bank of England. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXXI.
Title, and pp. 16 (last blank). 4to. 120 copies printed.
1784
A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole Earl of Orford, at Strawberry-Hill near Twickenham, Middlesex. With an Inventory of the Furniture, Pictures, Curiosities, &c. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXXIV.
Title; ‘Preface.’ i-iv; Text, pp. 1-88. ‘Errata, etc.,’ ‘Appendix,’ pp. 89-92; ‘Curiosities added,’ etc., 93-4; ‘More Additions,’ 95-6. 27 plates. 4to. 200 copies printed. ‘The next time he [Sir Horace Mann’s nephew] visits you, I may be able to send you a description of my Galleria,—I have long been preparing it, and it is almost finished,—with some prints, which, however, I doubt, will convey no very adequate idea of it’ (Walpole to Mann, 30 Sept., 1784). ‘In the list for which Lord Ossory asks, is the Description of this place; now, though printed, I have entirely kept it up [i. e., held it back], and mean to do so while I live’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 15 Sept., 1787).
1785
Hieroglyphic Tales. Schah Baham ne comprenoit jamais bien que les choses absurdes & hors de toute vraisemblance. Le Sopha, p. 5. Strawberry-Hill: Printed by T. Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXXV.
Title; ‘Preface,’ iii-ix; Text, pp. 50; ‘Postscript.’ 8vo. Walpole’s own MS. note in the Dyce example says, ‘Only six copies of this were printed, besides the revised copy.’ ‘1772. This year, the last, and sometime before, wrote some Hieroglyphic Tales. There are only five’ (Short Notes). ‘I have some strange things in my drawer, even wilder than the ‘Castle of Otranto,’ and called ‘Hieroglyphic Tales;’ but they were not written lately, nor in the gout, nor, whatever they may seem, written when I was out of my senses’ (Walpole to Cole, 28 Jan., 1779), ‘This [he is speaking of Darwin’s Botanic Garden] is only the Second Part; for, like my King’s eldest daughter in the ‘Hieroglyphic Tales,’ the First Part is not born yet: no matter’ (Walpole to the Miss Berrys, 28 April, 1789). In 1822, the Hieroglyphic Tales were reprinted at Newcastle for Emerson Charnley.
Essay on Modern Gardening, by Mr. Horace Walpole. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Essai sur l’Art des Jardins Modernes, par M. Horace Walpole, traduit en François by M. le Duc de Nivernois, en MDCCLXXXIV. Imprimé à Strawberry-Hill, par T. Kirgate, MDCCLXXXV.
Two titles; English and French Text on opposite pages, 1-94. 4to. 400 copies printed. ‘How may I send you a new book printed here?... It is the translation of my ‘Essay on Modern Gardens’ by the Duc de Nivernois.... You will find it a most beautiful piece of French, of the genuine French spoken by the Duc de la Rochefoucault and Madame de Sévigné, and not the metaphysical galimatias of La Harpe and Thomas, &c., which Madame du Deffand protested she did not understand. The versions of Milton and Pope are wonderfully exact and poetic and elegant, and the fidelity of the whole translation, extraordinary’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 17 Sept., 1785). The original MS. of the Duc de Nivernois—‘a most exquisite specimen of penmanship’—was among the papers at Strawberry.
1789
Bishop Bonner’s Ghost. [By Hannah More.] [Plate of Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, MDCCLXXXIX.
Title and argument, 2 leaves; Text, pp. 1-4. 4to. 96 copies printed, 2 on brown paper, one of which was at Strawberry. It was written when Hannah More (‘my imprimée,’ as Walpole calls her) was on a visit to Dr. Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, at his palace at Fulham, June, 1789. ‘I will forgive all your enormities if you will let me print your poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity’ (Walpole to Hannah More, 23 June, 1789). ‘The enclosed copy of verses pleased me so much, that, though not intended for publication, I prevailed on the authoress, Miss Hannah More, to allow me to take off a small number.’... ‘I have been disappointed of the completion of “Bonner’s Ghost,” by my rolling press being out of order, and was forced to send the whole impression to town to have the copper-plate taken off.... Kirgate has brought the whole impression, and I shall have the pleasure of sending your Ladyship this with a “Bonner’s Ghost” to-morrow morning’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 16-18 July, 1789).
The History of Alcidalis and Zelida. A tale of the Fourteenth Century. [By Vincent de Voiture.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill. MDCCLXXXIX.
Title; Text, pp. 3-96. 8vo. This is a translation of Voiture’s unfinished Histoire d’Alcidalis et de Zelide. (See Nouvelles Œuvres de Monsieur de Voiture. Nouvelle Edition. A Paris, Chez Louis Bilaine, au Palais, au second Pilier de la grand’ Salle, à la Palme & au Grand Cesar, MDCLXXII.) There is a copy in the Dyce Collection. Another was sold in 1823 with the books of John Trotter Brockett, in whose catalogue it was said to be ‘surreptitiously printed.’ Kirgate had a copy, although Baker does not mention it.
Doubtful Date
Verses sent to Lady Charles Spencer [Mary Beauclerc, daughter of Lord Vere, and wife of Lord Charles Spencer] with a painted Taffety, occasioned by saying she was low in Pocket and could not buy a new Gown.
Single leaf. Baker says these were by Anna Chamber, Countess Temple.
Besides the above, Walpole printed at his press in 1770 vols. i. and ii. of a 4to edition of his works.
Footnotes
1 Another member for Castle Rising was Samuel Pepys, the Diarist.
2 The name of Horatio I dislike. It is theatrical, and not English. I have, ever since I was a youth, written and subscribed Horace, an English name for an Englishman. In all my books (and perhaps you will think of the numerosus Horatius) I so spell my name.—Walpoliana, i. 62.
3 It is also to be found asserted as a current story in the Note Books (unpublished) of the Duchess of Portland, the daughter of Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford, and the ‘noble, lovely little Peggy’ of her father’s friend and protégé, Matthew Prior.
4 These, hereafter referred to as the Short Notes, are the chief authority for three parts of Walpole’s not very eventful life. They were first published with the concluding series of his Letters to Sir Horace Mann, 2 vols., 1844, and are reprinted in Mr. Peter Cunningham’s edition of the Correspondence, vol. i. (1857), pp. lxi-lxxvii.
5 Martin’s Old Chelsea, 1889, p. 82; Beaver’s Memorials of Old Chelsea, 1892, p. 291.
6 Cunningham, v. 36, and ix. 519. The Duchess of Tyrconnell’s portrait, copied by Milbourn from the original at Lord Spencer’s, was one of the prominent ornaments of the Great Bedchamber at Strawberry Hill. (See A Description of the Villa, etc., 1774, p. 138.) There are some previously unpublished particulars respecting her as ‘Mlle. Genins’ in M. Jusserand’s extremely interesting French Ambassador at the Court of Charles the Second, 1892, pp. 153 et seq., 170, 182.
7 Walpole to the Miss Berrys, 5 March, 1791.
8 Reminiscences of the Courts of George the First and Second, in Cunningham’s Corr., i. xciii-xciv.
9 The book referred to is a ‘little lounging miscellany’ of notes and anecdotes by John Pinkerton, and was printed, soon after Walpole’s death, by Bensley, who lived in Johnson’s old house, No. 8 Bolt Court. It requires to to be used with caution (see Quarterly Review, vol. lxxii., No. cxliv.), and must not be confused with Lord Hardwicke’s privately printed Walpoliana, which relate to Sir Robert Walpole.
10 This is quoted by Mr. Hayward and others as if the last words were Sir Robert Walpole’s. But Lady Louisa Stuart says nothing to indicate this (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters, etc., 1887, i. xciii).
11 Letter to Montagu, 6 May, 1736.
12 Walpole to Montagu. Cunningham, 1857, i. 15.
13 Mr. D.C. Tovey (Gray and his Friends, 1890, 3 n.) thinks that Ashton probably never preached at Eton before he was made Fellow, in December, 1745,—which would greatly advance the date of Walpole’s communication. But it is cited here solely for its reminiscences of his school-days.
14 Saunderson had lost both his eyes in infancy from small-pox. This, however, did not prevent him from lecturing on Newton’s Optics, and becoming Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Another undergraduate who attended his lectures was Chesterfield. (See Letter to Jouneau, 12 Oct., 1712.) There is an interesting account of Saunderson by a former pupil, together with an excellent portrait, in the Gentleman’s Magazine for September, 1754.
15 Walpole to Miss Berry, 16 Aug., 1796.
16 Indeed, she is given too much to allicholly and musing.—Merry Wives of Windsor, act i. sc. iv.
17 Walpole to Montagu, 30 May, 1736.
18 Walpole to West, 17 Aug., 1736.
19 Walpole to Montagu, 20 May, 1736.
20 Notes and Queries, 2 Jan., 1869.
21 Gray’s Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 9.
22 Account of my Conduct, etc., Works, 1798, ii. 363-70.
23 Gray’s Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 18-19.
24 Gray to West, 22 May, 1739.
25 Walpole to West, no date, 1739.
26 Gray to West, 22 May, 1739.
27 Walpole to West, no date, 1739.
28 Walpole to West, 18 June, 1739.
29 Gray’s Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 30.
30 Walpole to West, Sept. 28-2 Oct., 1739.
31 Tory, however, was not illachrymabilis. He found his vates sacer in one Edward Burnaby Greene, once of Bennet College; and in referring to this, thirty-five years later, Walpole explains how Tory got his name. ‘His godmother was the widow of Alderman Parsons [Humphrey Parsons, of Goldsmith’s ‘black champagne’], who gave him at Paris to Lord Conway, and he to me’ (Walpole to Cole, 10 Dec., 1775).
32 Spence’s Anecdotes, by Singer, 2d ed., 1858, pp. 305-8.
33 Jarchius has taken the trouble to give us a list of those clubs, or academies [i. e., the academies of Italy], which amount to five hundred and fifty, each distinguished by somewhat whimsical in the name. The academicians of Bologna, for instance, are divided into the Abbandonati, the Ausiosi, Ociosi, Arcadi, Confusi, Dubbiosi, etc. There are few of these who have not published their Transactions, and scarce a member who is not looked upon as the most famous man in the world, at home.—Goldsmith, in The Bee, No. vi., for 10 November, 1759.
34 Walpole to West, no date, 1739.
35 Dr. Doran (‘Mann’ and Manners at the Court of Florence, 1876, i. 2) describes this connection as ‘a distant cousinship.’
36 Shortly after Lady Walpole’s death, Sir Robert Walpole married his mistress, Maria Skerret, who died 4 June, 1738, leaving a daughter, Horace Walpole’s half-sister, subsequently Lady Mary Churchill.
37 Walpole to Conway, 25 September, 1740.
38 Letters, etc., of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ii. 325.
39 Spence’s Anecdotes, by Singer, 2nd edn., 1858, p. xxiii.
40 This rests upon the authority of a shadowy Mr. Roberts of the Pell-office, who told it to Isaac Reed in 1799, more than half a century after the event. The subject is discussed at some length, but of necessity inconclusively, by Mr. D. C. Tovey in his interesting Gray and his Friends, 1890. Mr. Tovey thinks that Ashton was obscurely connected with the quarrel.
41 Walpole to Mason, 2 March, 1773. The letters to Mason were first printed in 1851 by Mitford. But Pinkerton, in the Walpoliana, i. 95, had reported much the same thing. ‘The quarrel between Gray and me [Walpole] arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraints of the university, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, etc., while I was for perpetual balls and plays. The fault was mine.’
42 Juvenis, non tam generis nobilitate, ac paterni nominis gloriâ, quam ingenio, doctrinâ, et virtute propriâ illustris. Ille vero haud citius fere in patriam reversus est, quam de studiis meis, ut consuerat, familiariter per literas quærens, mihi ultro de copiâ suâ, quicquid ad argumenti mei rationem, aut libelli ornamentum pertineret, pro arbitrio meo utendum obtulit.—Pref. ad Germana quædam Antiq. Monumenta, etc., p. 6 (quoted in Mitford’s Corr. of Walpole and Mason, 1851, i. x-xi).
43 Walpole’s Works, 1798, i. 6.
44 Gray’s Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 221.
45 Walpole’s Works, 1798, i. 8-9.
46 He gave this up at first, but afterwards, when his affairs became involved, reclaimed it (Cunningham’s Corr., i. 126 n.).
47 Patapan’s portrait was painted by John Wootton, who illustrated Gay’s Fables in 1727 with Kent. It hung in Walpole’s bedroom at Strawberry, and now (1892) belongs to Lord Lifford. In 1743 Walpole wrote a Fable in imitation of La Fontaine, to which he gave the title of Patapan; or, the Little White Dog. It was never printed.
48 Walpole to Chute, 20 August, 1743. Mr. John Chute was a friend whom Walpole had made at Florence, and with whom, as already stated in Chapter II., Gray had travelled when they parted company. Until, by the death of a brother, he succeeded to the estate called The Vyne, in Hampshire, he lived principally abroad. His portrait by Müntz, after Pompeio Battoni, hung over the door in Walpole’s bedchamber at Strawberry Hill. An exhaustive History of The Vyne was published in 1888 by the late Mr. Chaloner W. Chute, at that time its possessor.
49 Mr. Vertue the engraver made a very ingenious conjecture on this story; he supposes that Apelles did not draw a straight line, but the outline of a human figure, which not being correct, Protogenes drew a more correct figure within his; but that still not being perfect, Apelles drew a smaller and exactly proportioned one within both the former.—Walpole’s note.
50 Walpole’s Works, 1798, ii. 229-30. The final quotation is from Martial.
51 Ranby wrote a Narrative of the last Illness of the Earl of Orford, 1745, which provoked much controversy.
52 Walpole to Mann, 15 April, 1745.
53 Walpole to Mann, 26 May, 1742.
54 According to Pinkerton, another anecdote connects Mrs. Bracegirdle with the Walpoles. ‘Mr. Shorter, my mother’s father [he makes Horace say], was walking down Norfolk Street in the Strand, to his house there, just before poor Mountfort the player was killed in that street, by assassins hired by Lord Mohun. This nobleman, lying in wait for his prey, came up and embraced Mr. Shorter by mistake, saying, ‘Dear Mountfort!’ It was fortunate that he was instantly undeceived, for Mr. Shorter had hardly reached his house before the murder took place’ (Walpoliana, ii. 96). Mountfort, it will be remembered, owed his death to Mrs. Bracegirdle’s liking for him.
55 Walpole to Mann, 22 April, 1742.
56 Walpole to Mann, 26 May, 1742.
57 Walpole to Conway, 29 June, 1744.
58 Walpole to Montagu, 17 Sept., 1745.
59 Walpole later revised this verdict: ‘General Cope was tried afterwards for his behaviour in this action, and it appeared very clearly that the Ministry, his inferior officers, and his troops, were greatly to blame; and that he did all he could, so ill-directed, so ill-supplied, and so ill-obeyed.’
60 Walpole to Mann, 27 Sept., 1745.
61 Walpole to Mann, 25 April, 1746.
62 Walpole to Mann, 1 Aug., 1746.
63 Walpole to Mann, 21 August, 1746. Gray, who was at the trial, also mentions Balmerino, not so enthusiastically. ‘He is an old soldier-like man, of a vulgar manner and aspect, speaks the broadest Scotch, and shews an intrepidity, that some ascribe to real courage, and some to brandy’ (Letter to Wharton, August). ‘Old Balmerino, when he had read his paper to the people, pulled off his spectacles, spit upon his handkerchief, and wiped them clean for the use of his posterity; and that is the last page of his history’ (Letter to Wharton, 11 Sept., 1746).
64 Walpole’s Works, 1798, i. 25-7.
65 Englefield, i. e. Englefield Green, in Berkshire, on the summit of Cooper’s Hill, near Windsor, where Edward Walpole lived.
66 Robert Walpole, second Earl of Orford, Horace Walpole’s eldest brother, died in March, 1751.
67 Walpole’s Works 1798, i. 21-2.
68 Writing to Walpole in March, 1751, Gray says: ‘In the last volume [of Peregrine Pickle] is a character of Mr. Lyttleton [sic], under the name of “Gosling Scrag,” and a parody of part of his Monody, under the notion of a Pastoral on the death of his grandmother’ (Works by Gosse, 1884, ii. 214).
69 Walpole to Mann 15 Sept., 1746.
70 She was the sister of Pope’s Mrs. Bertrand, an equally fashionable toy-woman at Bath. Her shop, according to an advertisement in the Daily Journal for May 24, 1733, was then ‘against Suffolk Street, Charing Cross.’ It is mentioned in Fielding’s Amelia. When, in Bk. viii., ch. i., Mr. Bondum the bailiff contrives to capture Captain Booth, it is by a false report that his Lady has been ‘taken violently ill, and carried into Mrs. Chenevix’s Toy-shop.’ It is also mentioned in the Hon. Mrs. Osborne’s Letters, 1891, p. 73; and again by Walpole himself in the World for 19 Dec., 1754.
71 This is slightly varied from ll. 29, 30, of Pope’s fifth Moral Essay (‘To Mr. Addison: Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals’).
72 Walpole to Conway, 8 June, 1747.
73 In the Tribune (see chap. viii.) was a drawing by Mr. Bentley, representing two lovers in a church looking at the tombs of Abelard and Eloisa, and illustrating Pope’s lines:—
‘If ever chance two wand’ring lovers brings
To Paraclete’s white walls and silver springs,’ etc.
74 The chiaroscuros of John Baptist Jackson, published at Venice in 1742. At this date he had returned to England, and was working in a paper-hanging manufactory at Battersea.
75 Lord Radnor’s fantastic house on the river, which Walpole nicknamed Mabland, came between Strawberry Hill and Pope’s Villa, and is a conspicuous object in old views of Twickenham, notably in that, dated 1757, by Müntz, a Jersey artist for some time domiciled at Strawberry Hill (see p. 138). It was in the garden of Radnor House that Pope first met Warburton.
76 Walpole to Mann, 12 June, 1753.
77 The version here followed is that given in A Description of the Villa, etc., 1774, pp. 117-19.
78 World, 19 Dec., 1754 (Works, 1798, i. 177-8).
79 Another instance of Maclean’s momentary vogue is given by Cunningham. He is hitched into Gray’s Long Story, which was written at the very time he was taken:
‘A sudden fit of ague shook him,
He stood as mute as poor Macleane.’
This couplet has been recently explained by Gray’s latest editor, Dr. Bradshaw, to be a reference to Maclean’s only observation when called to receive sentence. ‘My Lord [he said], I cannot speak.’
80 He was popularly known as ‘Peter Shamble.’ He afterwards became Earl of Harrington.
81 Elizabeth Neale, here referred to, was a well-known personage in St. James’s Street, where, for many years, she kept a fruit shop. From Lady Mary Coke’s Letters and Journals, 1889, vol. ii., p. 427, Betty appears to have assiduously attended the debates in the House of Commons being characterized as a ‘violent Politician, & always in the opposition.’ In Mason’s Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight, she is spoken of as ‘Patriot Betty.’ She survived until 1797, when her death, at the age of 67, is recorded in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
82 Walpole to Montagu, 23 June, 1750.
83 Nevertheless, when this ‘Roi en Exil’ shortly afterwards died, Walpole erected a tablet in St. Anne’s Churchyard, Soho, to his memory, with the following inscription:—
‘Near this place is interred
Theodore, King of Corsica;
Who died in this parish, Dec. 11, 1756,
Immediately after leaving the King’s-Bench-Prison,
By the benefit of the Act of Insolvency;
In consequence of which he registered
His Kingdom of Corsica
For the use of his Creditors.
‘The Grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and Kings.
But Theodore this moral learn’d, ere dead;
Fate pour’d its lessons on his living head,
Bestow’d a kingdom, and denied him bread.’
Theodore’s Great Seal, and ‘that very curious piece by which he took the benefit of the Act of Insolvency,’ and in which he was only styled Theodore Stephen, Baron de Neuhoff, were among the treasures of the Tribune. (See Chapter VIII.)
84 A copy of the poems, ‘illustrated with the original designs of Mr. Richard Bentley,... and also with Mr. Gray’s original sketch of Stoke House, from which Mr. Bentley made his finished pen drawing,’ was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842 to H. G. Bohn for £8 8s.
85 The verses include this magnificent stanza:—
‘But not to one in this benighted age
Is that diviner inspiration giv’n,
That burns in Shakespeare’s or in Milton’s page,
The pomp and prodigality of heav’n.’
86 It is copied in Cunningham, vol. iii. p. 475. It was sold for £157 10s. at the Strawberry Hill sale, and passed into the collection of the late Lord Taunton.
87 See p. 192 n.
88 It may be observed that when Walpole’s letter was published, it was briefly noticed in the Monthly Review, where at this very date Oliver Goldsmith was working as the hind of Griffiths and his wife. It is also notable that the name of Xo Ho’s correspondent, Lien Chi, seems almost a foreshadowing of Goldsmith’s Lien Chi Altangi. Can it be possible that Walpole supplied Goldsmith with his first idea of the Citizen of the World?
89 A four-wheeled carriage with a movable hood. Cf. Prior’s Down Hall: ‘Then answer’d Squire Morley: Pray get a calash, That in summer may burn, and in winter may splash,’ etc.
90 Works, 1798, i. 208.
91 These, though printed in 1758, were not circulated until 1759. See, at end, ‘Appendix of Books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press,’ which contains ample details of all these publications.
92 Walpole to Zouch, 14 May, 1759.
93 Walpole to Zouch, 12 January, 1759.
94 ‘Mr. Vertue’s Manuscripts, in 28 vols.,’ were sold at the Sale of Rare Prints and Illustrated Works from the Strawberry Hill Collection on Tuesday, 21 June, 1842, for £26 10s. Walpole says in the Short Notes that he paid £100. The Vertue MSS. are now in the British Museum, which acquired them from the Dawson Turner collection.
95 The Anecdotes of Painting was enlarged by the Rev. James Dallaway in 1826-8, and again revised, with additional notes, by Ralph N Wornum in 1839. This last, in three volumes, 8vo is the accepted edition.
96 She was married to Charles, 3rd Viscount Townshend in 1723, and was the mother of Charles Townshend, the statesman. She died in 1788. There was an enamel of her by Zincke after Vanloo in the Tribune at Strawberry Hill, which is engraved at p 150 of Cunningham’s second volume.
97 Sic. in orig.; but query ‘print.’
98 Works, 1798, vol. iv., pp. 382-3.
99 See chapter ix.
100 Cf. chapter vi. of Fielding, by the present writer, in the Men of Letters series, 2nd edition, 1889, pp. 145-7.
101 Letter to Cole, 9 March, 1765.
102 It is curious to note in one of his letters at this date a mot which may be compared with the famous ‘Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.’ Walpole is more sardonic. ‘Paris,’ he says, ‘... like the description of the grave, is the way of all flesh’ (Walpole to Mann, 30 June, 1763).
103 Gilly Williams to Selwyn, 19 March, 1765.
104 Lady Mary Coke, to whom the second edition of the Gothic romance was dedicated, was the youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich. At this date, she was a widow,—Lord Coke having died in 1753. Two volumes of her Letters and Journals, with an excellent introduction by Lady Louisa Stuart, were printed privately at Edinburgh in 1889 from MSS. in the possession of the Earl of Home. A third volume, which includes a number of epistles addressed to her by Walpole, found among the papers of the late Mr. Drummond Moray of Abercairny, was issued in 1892. Walpole’s tone in these documents is one of fantastic adoration; but the pair ultimately (and inevitably) quarrelled. There is a well-known mezzotint of Lady Mary by McArdell after Allan Ramsay, in which she appears in white satin, holding a tall theorbo. The original painting is at Mount Stuart, and belongs to Lord Bute.
105 Walpole to Montagu, 22 September, 1765.
106 Walpole to Chute, 3 October, 1765.
107 Madame de Genlis mentions this fearsome monster in her Mémoires: ‘Tout le monde a entendu parler de la hyène de Gévaudan, qui a fait tant de ravages.’ The point of Walpole’s allusion to Pitt is explained in one of his hitherto unpublished letters to Lady Mary Coke at this date: ‘I had the fortune to be treated with the sight of what, next to Mr. Pitt, has occasioned most alarm in France, the Beast of the Gévaudan’ (Letters and Journals, iii. [1892], xvii). In another letter, to Pitt’s sister Ann, maid of honour to Queen Caroline, he says: ‘It is a very large wolf, to be sure, and they say has twelve teeth more than any of the species, and six less than the Czarina’ (Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS. Commission, 13th Rept., App. iii., 1892, i. 147).
108 Of Mad. de Forcalquier it is related that, entering a theatre during the performance of Gresset’s Le Méchant, just as the line was uttered, ‘La faute est aux dieux, qui la firent si belle,’ the applause was so great as to interrupt the play. The point of this, in a recent repetition of the anecdote, was a little blunted by the printer’s substitution of ‘bête’ for ‘belle.’
109 Louis-Jules-Barbon Mancini-Mazarini, Duc de Nivernais (1716-98), who had visited Twickenham three years earlier, when he was Ambassador to England. He was a man of fine manners, and tastes so literary that his works fill eight volumes. They include a translation of Walpole’s Essay on Modern Gardening (see appendix at end). In his letters to Miss Ann Pitt at this date, Walpole speaks of the Duke’s clever fables, by which he is now best remembered. Lord Chesterfield told his son in 1749 that Nivernais was ‘one of the prettiest men he had ever known,’ and in 1762 his opinion was unaltered. ‘M. de Nivernais est aimé, respecté, et admiré par tout ce qu’ il y a d’honnêtes gens à la cour et à la ville,’ he writes to Madame de Monconseil. The Duke’s end was worthy of Chesterfield himself, for he spent some of his last hours in composing valedictory verses to his doctor. (See ‘Eighteenth Century Vignettes,’ second series, pp. 107-137.)
110 One of her logogriphes, or enigmas, is as follows:—
‘Quoique je forme un corps, je ne suis qu’une idée;
Plus ma beauté vieillit, plus elle est décidée:
Il faut, pour me trouver, ignorer d’où je viens:
Je tiens tout de lui, qui reduit tout à rien.’
The answer is noblesse. Lord Chesterfield thought it so good that he sent it to his godson (Letter 166).
111 Walpole to Gray, 25 January, 1766.
112 He was malicious enough to add, ‘a pretty round half.’ In middle life Mrs. Clive, like her Twickenham neighbour, Mrs. Pritchard, grew excessively stout; and there is a pleasant anecdote that, on one occasion, when the pair were acting together in Cibber’s Careless Husband, the audience were regaled by the spectacle of two leading actresses, neither of whom could manage to pick up a letter which, by ill-luck, had been dropped upon the ground.
113 In a recently printed letter to Miss Ann Pitt, 19 Jan., 1766, Walpole makes reference to the popularity which this jeu d’esprit procured for him. ‘Everybody wou’d have a copy [of course he encloses one to his correspondent]; the next thing was, everybody wou’d see the author.... I thought at last I shou’d have a box quilted for me, like Gulliver, be set upon the dressing-table of a maid of honour, and fed with bonbons.... If, contrary to all precedent, I shou’d exist in vogue a week longer, I will send you the first statue that is cast of me in bergamotte or biscuite porcelaine’ (Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS. Commision, 13th Rept., App. iii. [1892], i, 153).
114 Hume’s narrative of the affair may be read in A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau: with the Letters that passed between them during their Controversy. As also, the Letters of the Hon. Mr. Walpole, and Mr. D’Alembert, relative to this extraordinary Affair. Translated from the French. London. Printed for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, near Surry-street, in the Strand, MDCCLXVI.
115 Walpole to Lady Hervey, 2 January, 1766. In a letter to Lady Mary Coke, dated two days later, he says: ‘Rousseau set out this morning for England. As He loves to contradict a whole Nation, I suppose he will write for the present opposition.... As he is to live at Fulham, I hope his first quarrel will be with his neighbour the Bishop of London, who is an excellent subject for his ridicule’ (Letters and Journals, iii. 1892, xx).
116 Walpole to Chute, 10 October, 1766.
117 Lady Mary Coke testifies to the charm of her conversation: ‘In the evening I made a visit to Madame du Deffan [sic]. She talks so well that I wish’d to write down everything She said, as I thought I shou’d have liked to have read it afterwards’ (Letters and Journals, iii. [1892], 233).
118 Walpole to Montagu, 7 September, 1769.
119 Letters of Madame du Deffand, 1810, i. 211 n.
120 i. e. Soot-water. There were two landscapes in soot-water by Mr. Bentley in the Green Closet at Strawberry.
121 See chapter ix.
122 Works, 1798, i. 129.
123 He says he ‘was going to Paris in a day or two.’ But his memory must have deceived him, for Chatterton’s last letter is dated July 24th, 1769, and, according to Miss Berry, Walpole’s visit to Paris lasted from the 18th August to the 5th October, 1769; and this is confirmed by his correspondence.
124 Works, 1798, iv. 219. In the above summary of the story we have relied by preference on the fairly established facts of the case, which is full of difficulties. The most plausible version of it, as well as the most fair to Walpole, is given in Prof. D. Wilson’s Chatterton, 1869.
125 An example of this is furnished by Miss Seward’s Correspondence. ‘Do not expect [she writes] that I can learn to esteem that fastidious and unfeeling being, to whose insensibility we owe the extinction of the greatest poetic luminary [Chatterton], if we may judge from the brightness of its dawn, that ever rose in our, or perhaps in any other, hemisphere’ (Seward to Hardinge, 21 Nov., 1787).
126 Works, 1798, iv. 205-45. See also Bibliographical Appendix to this volume.
127 Henrietta Hobart, Countess Dowager of Suffolk, died in July, 1767. Her portrait by Charles Jervas, with Marble Hill in the background, hung in the Green Bed-chamber in the Round Tower at Strawberry. It once belonged to Pope, who left it to Martha Blount; and it is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. ii. of Cunningham’s edition of the Letters.
128 ‘The Duke of Gloucester’—wrote Gilly Williams to Selwyn, as far back as December, 1764—‘has professed a passion for the Dowager Waldegrave. He is never from her elbow. This flatters Horry Walpole not a little, though he pretends to dislike it.’
129 The idea was borrowed from an inscription upon a statue at Milan: ‘Non me Praxiteles, sed Marcus finxit Agrati!’
130 From a passage in a letter of 15 Sept., 1787, to Lady Ossory, it appears that this, though printed, was withheld, on account of certain difficulties caused by the over-weening curiosity of Walpole’s ‘customers’ (as he called them), the visitors to Strawberry. According to the sheet of regulations for visiting the house, it was to be seen between the 1st of May and the 1st of October. Children were not admitted; and only one company of four on one day.
131 ‘It is not much larger than an old lady’s flower-knot in Bloomsbury,’ said Lady Morgan in 1826.
132 See p. 6.
133 See p. 117 n.
134 It was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1781, and was Bunbury’s acknowledgment of the praise given him by Walpole in the ‘Advertisement’ to the fourth volume of the Anecdotes of Painting, 1 Oct., 1780. A copy of it was shown at the Exhibition of English Humourists in Art, June, 1889.
135 In a note to Madame du Deffand’s Letters, 1810, i. 201, the editor, Miss Berry, thus describes this picture: It was ‘a washed drawing of Mad. la Duchesse de Choiseul and Mad. du Deffand, under their assumed characters of grandmother and granddaughter; Mad. de Choiseul giving Mad. du Deffand a doll. The scene the interior of Mad. du Deffand’s sitting-room. It was done by M. de Carmontel, an amateur in the art of painting. He was reader to the Prince of Condé, and author of several little Theatrical pieces.’ It is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. vii. of Walpole’s Letters, by Cunningham, 1857-59. Mad. du Deffand’s portrait was said to be extremely like; that of the Duchess was not good.
136 ‘It is now the Musée Carnavalet, and contains numberless souvenirs of the Revolution, notably a collection of china plates, bearing various dates, designs, and inscriptions applicable to the Reign of Terror’ (Century Magazine90, p. 600). A washed drawing of Madame de Sévigné’s country house at Les Rochers, ‘done on the spot by Mr. Hinchcliffe, son of the Bishop of Peterborough, in 1786,’ was afterwards added to this room.
137 Both these pictures are in existence. The Scott belongs to Lady Freake, and was exhibited in the Pope Loan Museum of 1888.
138 Both these are engraved in Cunningham’s edition of the Letters, the former in vol. iv., p. 465, the latter in vol. ix., p. 529.
139 This was the Amsterdam edition of 1707, in 2 vols. 12mo., inscribed ‘E libris, A. Pope, 1714;’ and lower down, ‘Finished ye translation in Feb. 1719-20, A. Pope.’ It also contained a pencil sketch by the poet of Twickenham Church.
140 Walpole wrote an epilogue—not a very good one—for Mrs. Clive when she quitted the stage; and in the same year, 1769, the Town and Country Magazine linked their names in its ‘Tête-à-Têtes’ as ‘Mrs. Heidelberg’ (Clive’s part in the Clandestine Marriage) and ‘Baron Otranto’ (a name under which Chatterton subsequently satirized Walpole in this identical periodical). See Memoirs of a Sad Dog, Pt. 2, July, 1770.
141 Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole, created Baron Walpole of Wolterton in 1756. He died in 1757. His Memoirs were published by Coxe in 1802.
142 ‘The chief boast of my collection,’ he told Pinkerton, ‘is the portraits of eminent and remarkable persons, particularly the miniatures and enamels; which, so far as I can discover, are superior to any other collection whatever. The works I possess of Isaac and Peter Oliver are the best extant; and those I bought in Wales for 300 guineas [i.e., the Digby Family, in the Breakfast Room] are as well preserved as when they came from the pencil (Walpoliana, ii. 157).
143 It is printed in both the Catalogues.
144 At the sale in 1842, King Henry’s dagger was purchased for £54 12s. by Charles Kean the actor, who also became the fortunate possessor, for £21, of Cardinal Wolsey’s hat.
145 Here is his own reference to this, in a letter to Montagu of 14 Oct., 1756: ‘The only thing I have done that can compose a paragraph, and which I think you are Whig enough to forgive me, is, that on each side of my bed I have hung Magna Charta, and the Warrant for King Charles’s execution, on which I have written Major Charta; as I believe, without the latter, the former by this time would be of very little importance.’
146 See p. 7 n.
147 ‘Dr Dee’s black stone was named in the catalogue of the collection of the Earls of Peterborough, whence it went to Lady Betty Germaine. She gave it to the last Duke of Argyle, and his son, Lord Frederic, to me’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 12 Jan., 1782)
148 This was afterwards moved to the Little Cloister at the entrance, where it appears in the later Catalogue. At the sale of 1842 the bowl, with its Gothic pedestal, was purchased by the Earl of Derby for £42.
149 Not far from the Chapel was ‘a large seat in the form of a shell, carved in oak from a design by Mr. Bentley.’ It must have been roomy, for in 1759 the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury (the last two, daughter and mother), occupied it together. ‘There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in the shell,’ says the delighted Abbot of Strawberry. (Walpole to Montagu, 2 June.)
150 In a note to the obituary notice of Walpole in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March, 1797, p. 260, it is stated that this library was ‘formed of all the publications during the reigns of the three Georges, or Mr. W.’s own time.’
151 This was exhibited at South Kensington in 1867 by Viscount Lifford, and is now (1892) at Austin House, Broadway, Worcester.
152 Works, 1798, ii. 395-98.
153 Kendal House now no longer exists.
154 An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight, 1773.
155 ‘—— Brandford’s tedious town,
For dirty streets, and white-leg’d chickens known.’
Gay’s Journey to Exeter.
156 Gunnersbury House (or Park), a new structure, now belongs to Lord Rothschild.
157 The Old Pack Horse, somewhat modernized by red-brick additions, still (1892) stands at the corner of Turnham Green. It is mentioned in the London Gazette as far back as 1697. The sign, a common one for posting inns in former days, is on the opposite side of the road.
158 Hammersmith church was rebuilt in 1882-3.
159 Sir Baptist Hickes, once a mercer in Cheapside, and afterwards Viscount Campden, erected it circa 1612. At the time to which Mr. Cunningham is supposed to refer, it was a famous ladies’ boarding-school, kept by a Mrs. Terry, and patronized by Selwyn and Lady Di. Beauclerk.
160 The (with all due deference to the writer) quaint and picturesque old church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Kensington High Street, at which Macaulay, in his later days, was a regular attendant, gave way, in 1869, to a larger and more modern edifice by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A.
161 Old Kensington House, as it was called, has also been pulled down. One of its inmates, long after the days of ‘Madam Carwell,’ was Elizabeth Inchbald, the author of A Simple Story, who died there in 1821.
162 Now Lord Listowel’s. It stands near the Prince’s Gate into Hyde Park.
163 Restored and remodelled in 1861, and now the Church of the Holy Trinity.
164 The Hercules Pillars, where Squire Western put up his horses when he came to town, stood just east of Apsley House, ‘on the site of what is now the pavement opposite Lord Willoughby’s.’
165 The Duke of Queensberry’s house afterwards became 138 and 139 Piccadilly.
166 This is No. 106,—the present St. James’s Club. It was built in 1764 by George, sixth Earl of Coventry, some years after the death of his first wife, the elder Miss Gunning.
167 Letters, by Cunningham, 1857-9, ix. xx.-xxi.
168 Kirgate, who will not be again mentioned, fared but ill at his master’s decease, receiving no more than a legacy of £100,—a circumstance which Pinkerton darkly attributes to ‘his modest merit’ having been ‘supplanted by intriguing impudence’ (Walpoliana, i. xxiv). There is a portrait of him, engraved by William Collard, after Sylvester Harding, the Pall Mall miniature painter, who also wrote in 1797 for Kirgate some verses in which he is made to speak of himself as ‘forlorn, neglected, and forgot.’ He had an unique collection of the Strawberry Press issues, which was dispersed at his death, in 1810.
169 It was his good sense rather than his inclination that made him condemn one with whom he had many points of sympathy. Speaking of the quarrel of Johnson and Chesterfield, he says, ‘The friendly patronage [i. e. of the earl] was returned with ungrateful rudeness by the proud pedant; and men smiled, without being surprised, at seeing a bear worry his dancing-master.’
170 ‘Jephson’s Count of Narbonne has been more admired than any play I remember to have appeared these many years. It is still [Jan., 1782] acted with success to very full houses’ (Malone to Charlemont, Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Rept., App., Pt. x., 1891, p. 395). Malone wrote the epilogue.
171 ‘Silly Dr. Goldsmith’ he calls him to Cole in April, 1773. ‘Goldsmith was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts,’ he says again to Mason in October, 1776.
172 The rules of the so-called Female Coterie in Albemarle Street, together with the names of the members, are given in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1770, pp. 414-5. Besides Walpole and Miss Lloyd, Fox, Conway, Selwyn, the Waldegraves, the Damers, and many other ‘persons of quality’ belonged to it.
173 The Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, Lord Ossory’s brother. He afterwards became a General, and Secretary at War. At this time he was a captain in the Grenadier Guards. As a littérateur he had written The Bath Picture; or, a Slight Sketch of its Beauties; and he was later one of the chief contributors to the Rolliad. Besides being the life-long friend of Fox, he was a highly popular wit and man-of-fashion. Lord Ossory put him above Walpole and Selwyn; and Lady Holland is said to have thought him the most agreeable person she had ever known. He died in 1813.
174 One of the three beautiful sisters painted by Reynolds,—Elizabeth Laura, afterwards Viscountess Chewton; Charlotte Maria, afterwards Countess of Euston; and Anne Horatia, who married Captain Hugh Conway. ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds gets avaricious in his old age. My picture of the young ladies Waldegrave is doubtless very fine and graceful, but it cost me 800 guineas’ (Walpoliana, ii. 157).
175 He was not successful as regards Hogarth, whose widow was sorely and justly wounded by his coarse treatment of Sigismunda, which is said to have been a portrait of herself. The picture is now in the National Gallery.
176 Miss Hawkins (Anecdotes, etc., 1822, p. 103) did not think highly of these performances: ‘Unless the proportions of the human figure are of no importance in drawing it, these ‘Beauclerk drawings’ can be looked on only with disgust and contempt.’ But she praises the gipsies hereafter mentioned (p. 260 n.) as having been copied by Agnes Berry.
177 See pp. 158, 159.
178 The exact sum was £40,555. Cipriani and West were the valuers. Most of the family portraits were reserved; but so many of the pictures were presents that it is not easy to estimate the actual profit over their first cost to the original owner.
179 Walpole to Mann, 4 Aug., 1779.
180 This, according to Harrison’s Memorable Houses, 3rd ed., 1890, p. 62, is Lord Orford’s number as given in Boyle’s Court Guide for 1796.
181 According to a note in the selection from Madame du Deffand’s Correspondence with Walpole, published in 1810, iii. 44, these letters were at that date extant. But all the subsequent letters were burnt by her at Walpole’s earnest desire—those only excepted which she received during the last year of her life, and these, also, were sent back when she died.
182 Tonton was a snappish little dog belonging to Madame du Deffand, which, when in its mistress’s company, must have been extremely objectionable. In January, 1778, the Maréchale de Luxembourg presented her old friend with Tonton’s portrait in wax on a gold snuff-box, together with the last six volumes of Madame du Deffand’s favourite, Voltaire, adding the following epigram by the Chevalier de Boufflers:—
‘Vous les trouvez tous deux charmans,
Nous les trouvons tous deux mordans:
Voilà la ressemblance;
L’un ne mord que ses ennemis,
Et l’autre mord tous vos amis:
Voilà la différence.’
At Madame du Deffand’s death, both dog and box passed to Walpole, the latter finding an honoured place among the treasures of the Tribune. (See A Description of the Villa, etc., 1774, p. 137, Appendix of Additions.)
183 The MSS., which included eight hundred of Madame du Deffand’s letters, were sold in the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842 for £157 10s.
184 Walpole, as in the case of Madame du Deffand, had taken the precaution of getting back his letters, and at his friend’s death not more than a dozen of them were still in Mann’s possession. According to Cunningham (Corr., ix. xv), Mann’s letters to Walpole are ‘absolutely unreadable.’ An attempt to skim the cream of them (such as it is) was made by Dr. Doran in two volumes entitled ‘Mann’ and Manners at the Court of Florence, 1740-1786, Bentley, 1876.
185 Mrs. Clive is buried at Twickenham, where a mural slab was erected to her in the parish church by her protégée and successor, Miss Jane Pope, the clever actress who shed tears over the Beauclerk drawings (see p. 244). Her portrait by Davison, which is engraved as the frontispiece to Cunningham’s fourth volume, hung in the Round Bedchamber at Strawberry. It was given to Walpole by her brother, James Raftor.
186 ‘Whom she [Madame de Genlis] has educated to be very like herself in the face,’ says Walpole, referring to a then current scandal. At this date, however, it is but just to add that the recent investigations of Mr. J. G. Alger, as embodied in vol. xix. of the Dictionary of National Biography, tend to show that it is by no means certain that Pamela was the daughter of the accomplished lady whom Philippe Egalité entrusted with the education of his sons.
187 He is not explicit as to his creed. ‘Atheism I dislike,’ he said to Pinkerton. ‘It is gloomy, uncomfortable; and, in my eye, unnatural and irrational. It certainly requires more credulity to believe that there is no God, than to believe that there is’ (Walpoliana, i. 75-6). But Pinkerton must be taken with caution. (Cf. Quarterly Review, 1843, lxxii. 551.)
188 In 1786 she had dedicated to him her Florio, A Tale, etc., with a highly complimentary Preface, in which she says: ‘I should be unjust to your very engaging and well-bred turn of wit, if I did not declare that, among all the lively and brilliant things I have heard from you, I do not remember ever to have heard an unkind or an ungenerous one.’
189 This (we are told) was Lady Di.’s chef-d’œuvre. It was a water-colour drawing representing ‘Gipsies telling a country-maiden her fortune at the entrance of a beech-wood,’ and hung in the Red Bedchamber at Strawberry.
190 Walpole to Lady Ossory, 11 Oct., 1788.
191 Walpole to Pinkerton, 26 Dec., 1791.
192 Mary Berry died 20th Nov., 1852; Agnes Berry, Jan., 1852. They were buried in one grave in Petersham churchyard, ‘amidst scenes’—says Lord Carlisle’s inscription—‘which in life they had frequented & loved.’ H. F. Chorley (Autobiography, etc., 1873, vol. i., p. 276) describes them as ‘more like one’s notion of ancient Frenchwomen than anything I have ever seen; rouged, with the remains of some beauty, managing large fans like the Flirtillas, etc., etc., of Ranelagh.’ See also Extracts from Miss Berry’s Journals and Correspondence, 1783-1852, edited by Lady Theresa Lewis, 1865.
193 Trevelyan’s Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ch. v.
194 This is engraved in vol. ix. of Cunningham, facing the Index; while the Müntz, above referred to, forms the frontispiece to vol. viii.
195 The writer of the obituary notice in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March, 1797, says that Dance’s portrait is ‘the only faithful representation of him [Walpole].’ Against this must be set the fact that it was not selected by the editor of his works; and, besides being in profile, it is certainly far less pleasing than the Lawrence.
196 It must, by his own account, have been peculiar. ‘Walking is not one of my excellences,’ he writes. ‘In my best days Mr. Winnington said I tripped like a peewit; and if I do not flatter myself, my march at present is more like a dabchick’s’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory, 18 August, 1775).
197 Anecdotes, etc., by L. M. Hawkins, 1822, pp. 105-6.
198 ‘I have lately become acquainted with your friend Mr. Walpole, and am quite charmed with him.’—writes Malone to Lord Charlemont in 1782. ‘There is an unaffected benignity and good nature in his manner that is, I think, irresistibly engaging’ (Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Rept., App., Pt. x., 1891, p. 395).
199 Tonton. See note to p. 250.
200 Another passage in the Walpoliana (i. 71-2) explains this: ‘Regularly after breakfast, in the summer season, at least, Mr. Walpole used to mix bread and milk in a large bason, and throw it out at the window of the sitting-room, for the squirrels; who, soon after, came down from the high trees, to enjoy their allowance.’
201 ‘I cannot go up or down stairs without being led by a servant. It is tempus abire for me: lusi satis’ (Walpole to Pinkerton, 15 May, 1794).
202 ‘I have persisted’—he tells Gray from Paris in January, 1766—‘through this Siberian winter in not adding a grain to my clothes and in going open-breasted without an under waistcoat.’
203 He was probably thinking of Spectator, No. 228: ‘The Indian answered very well to an European, who asked him how he could go naked: I am all Face.’ Lord Chesterfield wished his little godson to have the same advantage. ‘I am very willing that he should be all face,’ he says in a letter to Arthur Stanhope of 19th October, 1762.
204 Walpoliana, i. xi-xiv.
205 See Mr. Robins’s Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill, etc. (1842), 4to. It is compiled in his well-known grandiloquent manner; but includes an account of the Castle by Harrison Ainsworth, together with many interesting details. It gave rise to a humorous squib by Crofton Croker, entitled Gooseberry Hall, with ‘Puffatory Remarks,’ and cuts.
206 Walpole to Montagu, 12 March, 1768.
207 The full titles of these memoirs are Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of King George II. Edited by Lord Holland. 2 vols. 4to., 1822; and Memoirs of the Reign of King George III. Edited, with Notes, by Sir Denis Le Marchant, Bart. 4 vols. 8vo., 1845. Both were reviewed, more suo, by Mr. Croker in the Quarterly, with the main intention of proving that all Walpole’s pictures of his contemporaries were coloured and distorted by successive disappointments arising out of his solicitude concerning the patent places from which he derived his income,—in other words (Mr. Croker’s words!), that ‘the whole is “a copious polyglot of spleen.”’ Such an investigation was in the favourite line of the critic, and might be expected to result in a formidable indictment. But the best judges hold it to have been exaggerated, and to-day the method of Mr Croker is more or less discredited. Indeed, it is an instance of those quaint revenges of the whirligig of Time, that some of his utterances are really more applicable to himself than to Walpole. ‘His [Walpole’s] natural inclination [says Croker] was to grope an obscure way through mazes and souterrains rather than walk the high road by daylight. He is never satisfied with the plain and obvious cause of any effect, and is for ever striving after some tortuous solution.’ This is precisely what unkind modern critics affirm of the Rt. Honourable John Wilson Croker.
208 Idler, No. lxxvii. (6 Oct., 1759).
209 See Appendix, p. 320. To the advocates of the rival school Walpole’s utterance, perhaps inevitably, appears in a less favourable light. ‘Horace Walpole published an Essay on Modern Gardening in 1785, in which he repeated what other writers had said on the subject. This was at once translated, and had a great circulation on the Continent. The jardin à l’Anglaise became the rage; many beautiful old gardens were destroyed in France and elsewhere; and Scotch and English gardeners were in demand all over Europe to renovate gardens in the English manner. It is not an exhilarating thought that in the one instance in which English taste in a matter of design has taken hold on the Continent, it has done so with such disastrous results’ (The Formal Garden in England, 2nd edn., 1892, p. 86).